In the wake of many tragic events this year, including the Orlando nightclub shooting and massacre of five police officers in Dallas, I’m often asked to find stories of hope amid the tragedy. As we’ve learned time and time again, guns are fired one second, heroes are often born the next. Here are a couple of examples.

I travel at least once a week for work, but I can’t say that I have used Airbnb yet. But I will say that we often travel on short notice, and in some cities (like San Francisco), it can be hard to find a hotel.

For Wednesday’s TODAY Show, we interviewed travelers, homeowners and Concur to learn more about this growing trend.

My apologies for the long gap between my last post and this one. In the news world, our West Coast bureau has kept very busy since the last time I wrote. In mid-March, we moved into our beautiful new facility and — as if someone had flipped on a light switch — the news didn’t stop for three months. On that first weekend, an entire neighborhood was buried by the massive landslide in Oso, Washington. We’ve also covered the Donald Sterling saga, the strange tale of the stowaway teen, destructive wildfires in San Diego and far too many tragic school shootings.

On a brighter note, I returned to Seattle for my final regional Emmy ceremony. KING 5 had a great night, winning more Emmys than any other station. I was lucky enough to take home four Emmys, including my first for Writing. Heading into this year, I had entered the writing category 11 times but never won. I was the Susan Lucci of news writing. Thankfully, the 12th (and final) time was the charm.

When covering the West Coast, we spend a lot of time in larger states, like California, Colorado and Washington. But over the past couple weeks, I spent time shooting stories in two of the smaller states in our coverage area: Idaho and Montana.

In Montana, we visited a small town — population 1800 — that can’t seem to catch a break. A flood in 2011, then a fire in 2012, followed by another flood this week. And the flooding risk is expected to linger into Spring. The photo above shows a well-traveled road submerged in water. The pictures below show crews sculpting a temporary road after the original path was washed away by floodwaters this week, plus the damage caused to another road that was just rebuilt after the 2011 flood.

In Idaho, a state famous for potatoes, we turned our attention to guns. State lawmakers voted to allow guns on college campuses, despite objections from the leaders of all eight public colleges in the state. The issue received national attention after a biology professor penned a satirical letter, which was published in the New York Times. The provocative title, “When may I shoot a student?” helped to focus more attention on the issue, but in the end, state lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the measure, saying Second Amendment rights should not end at campus borders.

I had the honor of meeting legendary film composer John Williams, who was an absolute pleasure to interview. He composed the now-iconic “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” for the 1984 Summer Games in L.A., never imagining the piece would endure for 30 years.

My favorite part of our story was digging into the music with “The Maestro.” He spells out what he was picturing during each part of the piece. We had fun bringing the images that were in his mind to life through our story.

With the Olympics in Russia, a litany of snowstorms in the Eastern U.S. and now civil unrest overseas, it has been a quiet couple weeks in the West Coast bureau. Quiet enough for me to finally clean out my e-mailbox, which was bursting at its virtual seams thanks to six months of neglect.

I’m using the down time to wrap up a couple cool stories, which should be airing in the next week or so. And to prepare for our impending Oscars coverage.

In the meantime, I wrapped up my final writing composite for the Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards. My former station KING-TV is kind enough to enter my work one more time.

This year’s Super Bowl will definitely go down as my favorite. First of all, the Seahawks won, which brought a huge smile to my face. Seattle, after all, has been deemed one of the most miserable sports cities in America — thanks to below-average teams and the heartbreaking absence of an NBA team — so they were due. Plus, I lived in Seattle for three years and greatly respected the loyalty of the fans.

I also got to do some fun Super Bowl stories — even though I didn’t actually go East to New Jersey. We had a TODAY Show pep rally for the Seahawks, where hundreds turned out at 2 a.m. to cheer for their team in front of a national audience.

We went behind the scenes of this year’s most popular Super Bowl ad: Budweiser’s “Puppy Love.”